By Jen WiecznerThe Daily Northwestern

They’ve seen the ‘real world’ and lived to tell about it.

Last year, thousands of undergraduates took their diplomas, four years – at least – in the making, and embarked in search of something. Fame. Fortune. Fulfillment. A good story to write home about. Higher degrees. Scut work paving the way to their dreams.

They found, and struggled with, financial independence, lessons learned the hard way, indecision when before they had been sure, and gratitude for their alma mater.

Here are five stories from the class of 2006.

The Wedding Singer

Never mind that she had already been at Northwestern for five years earning a dual degree in economics and vocal performance. When, after the commencement ceremony, the university president asked her what she would do next, Jonna Ashouripour had her answer ready.

“I said I hoped to come back to Kellogg,” she said. “If I got in, I would come in a heartbeat.”

The Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and School of Music graduate plans to work at a marketing company for two years before applying.

But the fields of business and music are on opposite poles: a career in singing would prevent her from having a day job, and marketing might allow little time for music. The commitment required for a master’s may force her to sacrifice her artistic aspirations.

“When it came to graduation I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she said. “I knew that I loved music and I never wanted to give it up, but I also had this analytical side of my brain.”

Though at graduation she planned to take a finance job, by September, she had changed her mind.

“I ruled finance out of the equation,” she said. “There’s no way you can do everything. Marketing is more of what I want to do, and if I get sucked into the financial world, I’ll never get out.”

Working as a marketing associate for a financial data consortium in Washington, D.C., Ashouripour said she earns $45,000 a year.

On weekends she sings at weddings and rehearsal dinners, gives piano lessons and directs a Georgetown church choir, which combined have provided an extra tax-free $1,200.

But doing finance, marketing and music is a balancing act.

“I’ve found a way to juggle all three,” she said. “I work every day of the week.”

In the future, Ashouripour said she will have to decide between careers.

“My music teacher always told me that (to be a musician) you have to give up everything and you can’t have a 9-to-5 job,” she said. “I don’t know where the road is going to take me.”

The Barista

Jason Nellis still does not know what he wants to be when he grows up.

“Maybe I’ll be a lawyer – I have no idea,” said Nellis, who graduated from the School of Communication with a theatre degree. “(Although) I would be the world’s worst lawyer.”

He is nearing the close of what he calls “my year of decompression,” during which he has worked full time at Evanston’s Cafe Ambrosia.

He will leave the cafe at the beginning of the summer and move to Los Angeles at the end, though he said he has changed direction every day for six months.

When he first came to NU, Nellis said he thought he would be an actor, catapulting to New York or Los Angeles right after commencement.

But then he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a type of lymphoma which forced him to miss part of his sophomore year but no longer affects him physically, he said.

“That sort of derailed my initial plans,” he said. “I needed to take the time to collect myself.”

Nellis also has been in several theatre performances, which “keeps me in shape in a dramatic perspective.”

“(But) now I’m getting to that point where I’m itching to get back in the game,” he said.

Nellis said he thinks he wants to do something in television or film in Los Angeles, but that he may also explore areas such as teaching.

“I’m sort of interested in being able to sit at a bar sometime and tell good stories,” he said.

Nellis is the oldest of five and has supported himself without help from his family, which has been hard, he said. He made about $10,000 as a barista this year, which he supplements by mowing lawns, helping people move and other side projects.

Because of his medical condition, Nellis did some extra contracting work for his father’s firm to get insurance benefits. He is afraid to fall into debt, so he watches his credit card bills.

“It’s not about being on the cover of a magazine or starring in a film – it’s about doing good work,” he said. “In the meantime, you do what you have to do to pay the bills.”

The Kindergarten Teacher

At the Roycemore School one block west of campus, John Dixon looks like Santa Claus as he sits in the sandbox, knee-high boys and girls climbing over him and falling into his lap.

To them he is Mr. John, their junior kindergarten teacher.

On that playground, the Communication graduate uses his theatre degree to save children from fire ant attacks, and pretends to be a dragon, making claws and baring his teeth.

“This first year has been very easy for me,” he said. “I feel unfairly lucky.”

After graduation he worked in a children’s clothing store until a parent of a babysitting client recommended him for an opening at Roycemore. Since January, Dixon has been teaching 3- and 5-year-olds full time.

He now ranks his preferred career paths in three tiers: First – improv.

“It’s the only thing that I know that I’m great at,” he said. “(But) there’s probably two people in the world who can make a living off it.”

Second, kids.

“I’m learning that I just don’t know as much as I thought.”

Third, acting.

“I just don’t feel that I’m in the top one percentile that you need to be.”

Dixon said he is thinking of getting a teaching degree, he said.

“I think working with kids may be the only way to have every day be fresh,” he said. “At this point I’m finding that out too late.”

He said his biggest problem is dividing his attention, between his students and in general. This past year he has had to adjust priorities and allot his time wisely, he said.

“I wouldn’t do a show where I’m just a chorus member because I would just rather teach,” he said.

His biggest gig so far was a role in Mr. Marmalade in Chicago, in which he played a 5-year-old for $300.

He was also half of a two-person improv show at a small theater owned by Second City, which he said sounds “bigger than it necessarily is.”

Now he is working on a show at the “tiny” Side Project Theater in Chicago that debuts the first weekend of June.

“I don’t know if they’re paying me,” he said. “I kind of doubt it. I got it when I would do anything.”

Most acting gigs don’t pay, but Dixon’s teaching job pays $11 an hour, or about $350 a week.

“I sort of barely survive,” he said. “I don’t feel like a stable adult yet.”

The superstar producer

Last spring Joy Piazza took her diploma and marched confidently to work at a broadcast affiliate in Hartford, Conn., for the nightmare salary of $18,000 a year.

“When I left Northwestern I thought, ‘I’m going to be a superstar newscast producer. I’m going to rule the local news and work my way up,'” said the Medill School of Journalism graduate. “I saw this job as a gateway to that type of career, where I wouldn’t stay in one city for more than 18 months.”

She was disappointed.

As an associate producer, she transferred tapes to the air and wrote 10 to 15 stories a night for the 11 p.m. news.

“I saw a lot of things that they never really taught me at Medill, like how to handle yourself in a bad working environment and what to do if your boss thinks you’re a bad writer,” she said.

But in February, just half a year later, she was declining offers that would more than double her salary, but decided to settle in comfortably at ESPN in February for an annual $30,000.

“I honestly haven’t met a
nyone that I didn’t like,” Piazza said. “That’s rare, especially in a company with 4,000 people.”

Her boyfriend, a fellow Medill ’06 grad, had been working at the company since November – in a different department – and the switch allows them to spend more time together.

“We do drive to work together,” Piazza said. “Sometimes we have lunch together. Our relationship is evolving.”

At ESPN she works as a production assistant in design and animation, creating the sets and opening sequences for the station’s programs.

“It basically just creates the look for a certain show,” she said. “I never thought about that kind of thing before. I realized there was this whole art form to it.”

Now Piazza is opening herself to new opportunities.

“My thoughts (about my career) have changed a little bit,” she said. “I never thought they would, but they did.”

The One-Man Show

Matt Sax is on the fast track to Broadway.

The Communication graduate’s one-man hip-hop show has been growing in Chicago since he left NU, and now he is trying to find his way to the big time.

Step one: Move to New York.

He did that just last week.

Step two: Get signed by an agency.

Sax said he will make his decision within a couple of weeks, but that he is “probably signing” with William Morris Agency, which boasts myriad talent from P. Diddy to Van Halen.

Step three: Get booked by a producer who wants to start your show off-Broadway before taking it all the way to the theater capital.

The producer of Broadway hits “Rent” and “Avenue Q” recently approached Sax’s company, he said.

Okay, maybe step one was taking the play for which he wrote all of the music and lyrics to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland the summer after his sophomore year.

“That was definitely the beginning of it,” Sax said. “Things are moving pretty quickly for me.”

After performing the show in Chicago for four months after graduation, writing a screenplay and an album, and working on sketch comedy on the side, Sax is bouncing between the showbiz industries in Chicago and on both coasts.

In August he will go to Los Angeles for six weeks to mount the show at a non-profit theater, and then return to New York to open the musical as a commercial production.

“It’s been surprising,” Sax said. “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.”

Though he would not disclose what riches success has brought him, this kind of fame has its perks.

“The greatest blessing of all of it is I’m able to support myself doing what it is that I love,” he said.

He recently met Scarlett Johansson while visiting an L.A. talent agency.

“She was absolutely beautiful,” he said. “But no, I don’t have a lot of celebrity friends. I have a lot of the same friends.”

Reach Jen Wieczner at [email protected].